Far-Right, Anti-Immigrant Parties Make Gains in Austrian Elections

Statement by Britta Schellenberg

By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: September 29, 2008

BERLIN  Austria's
anti-immigrant, far-right parties benefited from the severe discontent
among citizens of that small Alpine nation, winning almost a third of
the vote in parliamentary elections on Sunday

The country's two mainstream parties suffered significant losses,
though they received the most votes and could rebuild their fractious,
unpopular coalition. The Social Democratic Party led the voting with 30
percent, followed by the conservative Peoples Party with 26 percent;
they slipped by roughly 6 percentage points for the Social Democrats
and 9 percentage points for the Peoples Party.

But by far the
most notable result was the success of the far-right parties. The
Freedom Party, which is led by Heinz-Christian Strache, won 18 percent
of the vote, a gain of 7 percentage points. The Alliance for Austria's
Future, led by Jörg Haider,
a longtime Freedom Party leader who broke away and formed the new party
in 2005, got 11 percent, nearly tripling its result in the last vote
two years ago.

Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments have
been powerful forces in European politics in recent years, and rising
discontent over globalization and higher prices has helped fuel
populist sentiment, benefiting right-wing groups that place the blame
for economic woes squarely on immigrants and foreign competition.

Mr. Strache, a former dental technician, has called for a halt to immigration and a reclamation of some of the sovereign powers handed over to the European Union.
For Mr. Haider, his party's strong gains  and victory with almost 40
percent of the vote in the province of Carinthia, where he is governor
 seal a political comeback since his departure from the Freedom Party.

There is no love lost between the erstwhile allies, which would
make any coalition including both of the far-right parties more
difficult to form. Mr. Haider, in particular, tried to adopt a more
moderate line in this campaign than in the past.

"There are no
longer any major parties," Mr. Haider said in an interview with the
Austrian television station ORF. "It shows how great the exasperation
is with red and black," a reference to the colors of Social Democrats
and the People's Party.

The election was not a referendum on
immigration, according to Wolfgang Bachmayer, managing director of the
OGM Institute, a political consulting firm. It was primarily
frustration with the dysfunctional government that defined the results,
he said.

"In this election campaign, it also was more about
social themes and an anti-European Union attitude," he said. "The
Freedom Party in this campaign made far fewer attacks on foreigners
than in the past."

The Austrian government, a coalition between
the Social Democrats and the People's Party, collapsed after 18 months
of bitter dispute between them, which prevented action on
much-discussed reforms. Their combined popularity had reached a postwar
low.

For the People's Party, the weak showing continued a
stunning reversal from its victory in 2002. Yet Austria's two largest
parties could reconstitute their so-called grand coalition and, despite
their losses, continue to govern together.

A coalition of the
three right-wing parties is also possible, though the People's Party
ruled that out during the campaign. When the conservatives formed a
coalition with the Freedom Party in 2000, it provoked international
outrage and sanctions by other European countries.

"If you ask
the voters, 'Are you economically or socially in a better situation
than two or three years before?' then a clear majority says, 'No, we
are worse,' " said Peter Filzmaier, a political science professor at
Danube University in Krems. "This is a typical mood that helps populist
parties. Then there's a profit for right-wing groups that say it is
foreigners and other countries that are to blame."

Britta
Schellenberg, a research analyst on right-wing radicalism in Europe at
the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, said that xenophobia and
anti-Muslim sentiment had joined with increasing antipathy toward
globalization and capitalism. "This is exploited by the radical right
more frequently than even a couple of years ago," she said.